Essay: Competitive Intelligence

Chapter One
1. Introduction
1.1 Background of the study:
In the recent competitive market, a firm’s success increasingly depends on gaining a better understanding of competitive activities, and influences that understanding to differentiate one’s own product offerings in a meaningful manner.
To gain this knowledge of competitors, an increasing number of firms have mine in competitive intelligence (CI), the legal and ethical collection, analysis, and the distribution of information regarding the competitive environment and the capabilities, vulnerabilities, and strategic intentions of business competitors. One of the key concerns for Competitive Intelligence is to fight blind spots that lead to misunderstandings about how markets function, what competitors are doing, what customers want, or where the future lies (Antia & Hesford, 2007). On the other hand, Daft (2004) believed that CI is the fastest developing area in boundary spanning, but has yet to get much attention among the academe.
According to Fahey (2007) that the intelligence systems in organizations, especially competitive ones gives leaders of organizations the ability to analyze environmental changes and changes in the market so that they can determine the current and future strategies to meet the competitors\’ attacks. As well as, Raynor (2004) on his study findings, the competitive intelligence allows organizations to predict and understand the competitive marketplace forces, and act based on strategies flexibly to be able to formulate a strategy adapted to the status quo.
Strategic Orientation reflects the strategic behaviours implemented by a firm to create the right actions for continuous superior performance. Strategic Orientation is the competitive actions or that the general orientation that an organisation exhibits in the marketplace (Zheng, et al., 2010). Given the strategic orientation is usually at the heart of most organizational decision-making, it is not surprising that Strategic Orientation has been linked to innovation adoption in the past (Murray, 2012: 30).
Gilad and Gilad (1988) noting that monitor the competitive environment is needed in present strategy development since a strategy requires suggestion about the behaviour of competitors and their reactions to the firm’s strategic moves. Thus, the comprehensive gathering of information about competitors and the critical analysis of such information has become acknowledged as a central component of the firm’s Strategic Orientation activity. At the same time as the perceived importance of CI has grown, in that location is a high degree of doubt regarding the ability of a competitive intelligence organization to effectively get information for strategic decision making. A recent survey of corporate competitor analysis systems found a substantial gap between what was demanded by the organization and what was being posited by the company’s competitive analysis system (Ghoshal and Westney, 1991). Other writers have pointed out that the significance of competitive intelligence is that it is actionable and that it is required and utilized by decision makers (Weston, 1991).
Bader, et al. (2006) said that the competitive intelligence plays an important and critical part in strategic decision making, which is the primary engine in the conceptualization of the strategy or Strategic Orientations; the use of competitive intelligence will contribute to the provision of a trim and a meaningful strategy by:
1. Monitoring the change in the portfolio of competitors.
2. Monitoring of competitors\’ investments in research and development.
3. Monitoring mergers and acquisitions that make threats.
4. Determine the sales of competitors and competitive priority structures.
Given this premise, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of Competitive Intelligence on the Formulation of Aggressive, Defensive, Futurity and Proactiveness Strategic Orientations in Jordanian Cellular Telecommunications Firms.
1.2 Research Problem:
Competitive Intelligence plays an important part to support managers for better decision making and strategic planning. Competitive Intelligence is Known as a systematic and ethical program for gathering, analyzing, and managing information about the current and future behaviour of competitors, suppliers, customers, technologies, government, acquisitions, market and general business environment (Sapuan, et al. (2013)).
Despite the increasing importance of CI in business organizations, there are few systematic attempts to provide empirical evidence about the relationship between CI practices and execution firm. Literature also reveals that current evidence of the value and impact of CI consists of indirect evaluation (McGonagle and Vella, 2002).
Moreover, the current concepts and empirical works are mostly from the Western states, with very limited studies from the Arab region. With the lack of the application of such studies by business organizations Arab region, particularly in the Jordanian Cellular Telecommunications Firms, which explained the position of the current study problem, that pertained to identify the effect of Competitive Intelligence on the Formulation of Aggressive, Defensive, Futurity and Proactiveness strategic Orientations.
Accordingly, In the light of the problem definition, this study aims to answer the following questions:
1. To what extent the Jordanian Cellular Telecommunications Firm practices the Competitive Intelligence processes (Communication and analysis, Data Collection and Planning and focus)?
2. What is the importance level of Aggressiveness, Defensive, Futurity and Proactiveness strategic Orientation in the Jordanian Cellular Telecommunications Firms?
3. What is the significant effect of Competitive Intelligence (Communication and Analysis, Data Collection and Planning and focus) on Aggressive, Defensive, Futurity and Proactiveness Strategic Orientation in the Jordanian Cellular Telecommunications Firms?
4. What is the nature of the relationship between Competitive Intelligence processes and Strategic Orientation Dimensions within Jordanian Cellular Telecommunications Firms?
5. Which Competitive Intelligence processes have the most important effects on the Strategic Orientation within Jordanian Cellular Telecommunications Firms?
1.3 Importance of the study
The prior Competitive Intelligence and Strategic Orientation literatures share the same broad objective; investigating the effect of either CI or SO on organizational performance.
The work derives its meaning through the importance of the variables that are dealing with it, and summed up the importance of this through the following facts:
1. Attempt to perform a comprehensive survey of the study variables, concepts and dimensions that have been relied upon to measure study variables, hence that it can benefit researchers and practitioners as a taking off point for their future research.
2. Provide a systematic foundation in the area of assessing both the Competitive Intelligence that helps to rely on measures have a high level of reliability and robustness.
3. Highlighting the nature and importance of the indirect between study variables for the benefit of the future strategy that Jordanian Cellular Telecommunications Firms formulated and support their competitive position, as well as to assist decision-makers in Jordanian Cellular Telecommunications Firms to determine the nature of the ultimate objective of the efforts to provide services.
1.4 Research Objectives
This study aims to investigate the effect of Competitive Intelligence on the formulation of strategic Orientation in Jordanian Cellular Telecommunications Firms through the following objectives:
1. Investigate the extent to which Competitive Intelligence processes are practiced in the Jordanian Cellular Telecommunications Firms.
2. Investigate the extent to which Strategic Orientation dimensions are evident in the Jordanian Cellular Telecommunications Firms.
3. Explore the nature of the relationship between Competitive Intelligence processes and Strategic Orientation.
4. Identify the most influential Competitive intelligence processes that affect the formulation of Aggressive, Defensive, Futurity and Proactiveness Strategic orientation.
1.5 Research Limitations
1.6 Research Outline
This research is structured into five chapters:
Chapter 1, which is the current introduction chapter, included a preliminary overview of the research, theoretical background, its questions, and objectives, as well as its problem, importance, and limitation.
Chapter 2: is the literature review. In this chapter, a comprehensive and extensive review of the prior and latest studies will be presented. Based upon, the research, theoretical models and hypothesis will be produced.
Chapter 3: is the methodology chapter. In this chapter, the research, theoretical framework, including the main variables will be addressed. And based on, the research model, main hypothesis, and operational definitions of the main concepts will be refined based on the literature. This chapter is also concerned with presenting the research data and related issues, in addition to the examination of the goodness of the research instrument (Validity and Reliability).
Chapter 4: is the data analysis chapter. In this chapter, the characteristics of the sample including response rate and demographic characteristics of participating respondents and companies will be traced. Besides, the descriptive statistics of the research variables will be talked about.
Chapter 5: is concerned in discussing the consequences of data analysis, draw conclusions, and propose some practical recommendation for the Jordanian Cellular Telecommunications Firms.
Chapter Two: Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
This chapter is mainly concerned with reviewing the relevant literature regarding the research main variables in order to provide a preliminary understanding of the basic concepts of Competitive Intelligence and its major processes, and the concept of Strategic Orientation. Additionally, reviewing the literature is intended to build the operational definitions and the theoretical background of the study, which in turn supports the development of research model and the main hypotheses.
2.2 What is Intelligence?
The concept of intelligence has a broad history of more than 2,000 years (Juhari and Stephens, 2006).
In 1966, William Fair Suggested that the formulation of a corporate “Central Intelligence Agency” inside the firm whose task would be to “collect, screen, gather, organize, record, and distribute information” (Fair, 1966).
Since that time, this motion has arisen to become new business construct with planned job functions that are directly accountable for intelligence collection, depth psychology, and dissemination (Kahaner, 1996).
Theories about the intelligence process have been interned by many authors under many different names, including environmental scanning (Saxby et al., 2002), business intelligence (Pearce, 1976), strategic intelligence (Aaker, 1983; Montgomery and Weinberg, 1979), competitor analysis
(Ghoshal and Westney, 1991), Competitive Technical Intelligence (Albagli et al., 1996; Brockhoff, 1991), and market intelligence (Chonko et al., 1991; Guyton, 1962. Maltz and Kohli, 1996).
Shoemaker and Day (2006) have brought forward the concept of marginal vision, which is also really close to the competitive intelligence concept.
It is believed that “competitive” intelligence implies that the true purpose of Intelligence is to gain strategic advantage (Porter, 1980).
So, Competitive Intelligence includes competitor intelligence as well as intelligence that collected on Customers, suppliers, technologies, environments, or probable business relationships (Fair, 1966; Gilad, 1989; Grabowski, 1987; Guyton, 1962).
The outline for the literatures related to intelligence suggests that it is a marketing practice focused on gathering the Information on the competition (Schollhammer, 1994). Even so, a broader testing of the literature indicates that intelligence is almost not only monitoring competition, but besides the whole business environment. A more appropriate definition of intelligence is: “an actionable recommendations emerged from a systematic process “involving planning, gathering, analyzing, and distributing information on the outside environment for opportunities, or developments that carry the potential to run a company’s or country’s competitive situation “ (Calof and Skinner, 1998).
Recently, Calof has revised the definition to include the objective of intelligence. Intelligence helps the firms to support and develop distinct competitive advantages by applying the whole constitution and its network to develop actionable perception about the environment (customers, competitor, A periodical bulletin, technology. . .). It uses a systematic and ethical process involving, planning, collection, analysis, communication and management (Calof, 2008).
2.3 Competitive Intelligence
The concept Competitive Intelligence has a rich tradition (Juhari and Stephens, 2006), and it has strong bases in military science and holds a rich history dating back to more than 5,000 years (Tao and Prescott, 2000)..
In the recent history, especially in the management field, this concept has been studied for many times under different titles. For example, Aguilar (1967) and Fahey and King (1977) invented the phrase environmental scanning, which concentrated on how the executive mangers scan their organizations’ environment.
Likewise, over time other labels have been utilized in prior studies to identify competitive intelligence. Like:
• Business intelligence (Cleland and King, 1975),( Pearce, (1976)).
• Competition analysis (Ghoshal and Westney, 1991).
• Market intelligence (Maltz and Kohli, 1996)
However, CI developed as a distinct field, and the activities engaged have come to serve all business functions (Shukla… etc., (2012)).CI as a strategic business tool that has long been offered in an intelligence effort to increase a company’s competitiveness (Porter, 1980).
It is also an aspect of strategic management because it operates as the first link in the chain of perceptions and actions that allow an organization to adapt to its environment. Environments form important constraints and contingencies for organizations, and their competitiveness rely on the ability to monitor and adapt their strategies, founded on information obtained through competitive intelligence activities. Companies should become increasingly aware of the necessity to remain aware of their competitive environment. Competitive Intelligence can help the business in a lot of ways:what it can identify new markets, notions, opportunities or products; it can aid in the repositioning of existing products; it can help create ideas for new products, monitor trends and help you formulate business plans and strategies; and it can help you to identify attractive mergers and acquisition candidates (Donna and Barson (2002)).
Also, it provides knowledge of competitors, their marketing strategies, objectives, research activity, strengths and weaknesses and other information.
This analysis help companies in realizing their position with regards to major competitors in the global competitive environment and provides fulfilment business competitive intelligence.
Indeed, Competitive Cntelligence can be seen as a “method for supporting both strategic and tactical decisions, and even to support Competitive Intelligence, organizations need systems and processes to support Competitive Intelligence, and to collect and analyze reliable, relevant, and timely information that is available in wider amounts about competitors and markets” (Cobb, 2003).
Although CI is concerned with the methods companies employ to pass over their competitors, their own competitive position, and to improve their competitiveness, it is also aware with the techniques utilized to choose and filter data from a broad mixture of primary and secondary sources, to explain analyses and put across the informational intelligence to the right people, and to apply it effectively (Hall & Bensoussan, 1996).
There are many qualifiers of competitive intelligence, Calof and Skinner (1999), provide us a simple definition of competitive intelligence:“ It is an actionable recommendations that appear from a systematic process involving” planning, collecting, analyzing, and distributing information on the external environment for opportunities, or evolutions that have the potential to affect a company’s or country competitive situation”.
According to the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals ,( 2008):
Competitive Intelligence “is a systematic and ethical program for collecting, analyzing, and managing external information that can affect the company’s plans, decisions and operations. The right information, at the Right time, in the Right site, delivered the Right way, by the Right contact to the Right person.
In general, Competitive Intelligence is the systematic process by which firms ethically gather and analyze practical and useful information about competitors and the competitive environment and, preferably, apply it to their decision-making and planning procedures to improve their performance (Fleicher, 2004). in the point of view of Myburgh (2004), the objectives of Competitive Intelligence are managing and reduce the danger, make knowledge profitable, avoid information overload, ensure privacy and security of information, and use corporate information strategically.
In center, Competitive Intelligence helps strategists to understand the forces that act upon the business environment and, more significantly, to develop appropriate designs to compete successfully (McGonagle and Vella, 2002).
Guimaraes (2000) provides us with a summary of the benefits of Competitive Intelligence practice in strategic planning: bringing to light business opportunities and problems that will enable proactive strategies; providing the basis for continuous improvement; omit light on competitor strategies; improving speed to market and thereby supporting rapid globalization; improving the possibility of company survival; increasing business volume; providing better customer assessment; and improving understanding of external influences .
For the present research, Competitive Intelligence is known as a “Systematic and ethical process for gathering, analyzing and managing external information that can affect the company plans, decisions and operations (Saayman, et al.,(2008)).
The thought of intelligence as a process has long been proposed as an effort to improve the firm’s competitiveness and its strategic planning process (Porter, 1980).
2.3.1 Competitive intelligence objectives
The primary objectives of Competitive Intelligence are to supply assistance in decision-making and to provide the organizations with a competitive advantage.Competitive intelligence is a way to alarm the organizations, permanently of changes in the competitive environment (Muller, 2005).
The research workers have distinguished the following objectives of CI (Cucui 2009; Peltoniemi & Vuori 2008;8; Wright et al. 2009): enhancing the organizations competitiveness; predicting, actions, customers’ requirements and even influences generated by political change; providing better support for the strategic decision-making process; revealing of opportunities and threats by examining weak signals and early warnings; processing and combining data and information to produce knowledge and thoughts about competitors; satisfying the information needs of decision-making and problem-solving, and decreasing the reaction time; and innovating marketing strategies.
2.3.2 Competitive Intelligence as a process
Competitive Intelligence is the processes that made up of phases that are linked together (Nasri 2011).
The output of any phase of these phases is the input to the next one (Bartes,( 2012)).
The total output of the CI process is an input to the decision-making processes (Wright et al. 2009). The elements of the intelligence model have been investigated in many academic fields.
The process of Competitive Intelligence is the attitude of gathering, analyzing, and applying information about the products, suppliers, competitors, regulators, partners, and customers for the short- and long-term planning needs of an organization (Nasri, 2011).
Depending on Du Toit and Muller (2004), without appropriate intelligence process and structure, it is difficult to evolve intelligence.
Also, without the clear support of and use of intelligence by top management, the process will be damaged (Nasri, 2011).
In other words, the dominant influence on the successful competitive intelligence process is the presence of a management support, culture and scope that motivates and develops CI activities in companies (Nasri 2011).Thus, management must design, support and execute a CI process.Because of the confusion in the field of CI on how the CI process should be constructed, some agreement within the CI field on this should be reached (Wright & Calof 2006).
A study that has been conducted by Carr (2003) discovered that CI experts show the CI process as a cycle, using four-point models, as a scientific method and as a pyramid pyramid scheme.
Some researchers outline many phases in the CI process, while others identify fewer phases. Some scholars name the same phases differently, subsequently adding to the confusion in the field of CI.
The below CI process models were established in the literature: Calof and Skinner (1998) view the CI process “as a cycle consisting of four phases: planning and direction, data collection, information analysis and intelligence dissemination “. These two scholars expressing the information collection phase ‘data collection’ and skip information seize and storing.
Their CI process model does not merge influential factors such as decision-makers, reactions, organizational realization and culture, and process and structure. Kahaner (1998) also defines competitive intelligence as a cycle process with four phases: planning and direction, data and information collection, analysis and dissemination of intelligence to those who will use it. This CI process model skips information capturing and storage and terms the information collection phase ‘data and information collection’ phase. Information consists of ordering data. Therefore, in information there is data; there is no need to use both terms together in the name of this phase.
Melo and Medeiros (2007) add enlargement to Kahaner’s (1998) CI process cycle to make it as a five-phase cycle consists of planning, collection, analysis, dissemination and evaluation. These scholars also outrun the information that captured and stored and the influential factors.Calf and Dishman (2002) establish six phases of the CI process: planning and focus, collection, analysis, communication, process or structure and organizational awareness and culture. Although this is an improved CI process model, it omits information capturing and storage and feedback.
According to Viviers, Saayman and Muller (2005), the CI process is a cycle that made up of planning and focus, collection, analysis, communication, and awareness culture, process and structure.
Wright and Calof (2006) identify four phases of the CI process:
• Planning or focus.
• Data Collection
• Analysis and communication.
Key stages that appear from the Literature are:
2.3.2.1 Planning and Focus
This term refers mainly to” an assessment is made of what intelligence is required”, CI should only concentrate on those issues of the highest importance to senior management (Saayman, et al., (2008)).
In this phase the company’s define their requirements in terms of what information is needed? Why is it needed? When is it proper?
Effective Intelligence processes do not try to collect all possible information or researches or everything related to a subject ((Saayman, et al., (2008)).Some searchers call this phase ‘planning and focus’. In other scholars’ CI process models, this is the first phase, while it is the second in the others. It involves working with decision makers to discover their intelligence requirements and then translating those requirements in their specific intelligence requirements or “key intelligence topics” (kits) (Weiss, 2002). This step is required to allow the necessary resources for the CI process.
2.3.2.2 Data Collection.
For some investigators, this is the second phase of the Competitive Intelligence process, whereas it is the third phase in other models.
This phase is linked to different titles, such as ‘collecting primary data’, ‘researching and gathering information’, ‘data collection’, ‘collection’, ‘gathering’ and ‘monitoring business environment’,‘information collection’,. The confirmation is in the set of publicly available information (Botha & Boon 2008). This is to ensure the compatibility with the code of ethics that evolved by SCIP. The information to be collected must be related to the key intelligence topics.
In this phase the required information is collected from a set of sources (primary and secondary) using several techniques (Viviers et al, 2005). Some common primary sources include government agencies, employees, suppliers, customers, conferences, etc. Some common secondary sources include magazines, TV, radio, analyst reports, and professional reports.
The choice of a particular source is related to the type of data or information needed; such factors as ease of access, ease of processing the source, cost, availability, quantity and quality of information will possibly impact on the selection (Wanderley 1999).
It’s important to note the importance of creativity and innovation in the conveyance of information. One of the greatest sources of information come from employees of the firms itself, therefore an effective communication infrastructure must exist to support the conveyance of the information.
The Collection also involves various acquisition methods including environmental scanning (Engledow, 1986; Daft et al., 1988), surveys, telephone meetings, watching, media scanning and networking.
2.3.2.3 Analyses.
Some practitioners call this phase ‘analysis’ or ‘analysis and production’. This is the basic phase of the CI process (Viviers et al. 2005) and it is the most challenging (Nikolaos & Evangelia 2012). Processed information must be explained and analyzed to produce actionable intelligence. Mostly analysis techniques used the pestel (political or legal, economical, social and technological) analysis, scenario analysis, Porter’s five forces model, SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis (Viviers et al. 2005).
2.3.2.4 Communication.
The Actionable Intelligence is distributed to decision-makers in this phase. Some practitioners called this phase ‘communication’, ‘intelligence dissemination’, ‘disseminating information’, ‘communicating the final and ready intelligence’ and ‘filtering and disseminating intelligence’.
The final product, which is Actionable Intelligence, is communicated back to the decision-makers in a format that is easy to understand. The communication is in the form of a report, dashboard or meetings , Face-to-face, email and internal network communication are also used (Nasri 2011).
This phase includes also the estimation of the Competitive Intelligence process, the identification of its benefit and the assessment of its effectiveness in the decision making process (Santo, 2010). Feedback from the users is also important in the development and improvement of future Competitive Intelligence plans, as well as the review and re-evaluation of the organizational strategy (Fleisher 2001).
2.4 Strategic Orienation
Strategic Orientation has been studied for decades (Voss & Voss, 2000).Despite a focus on decisions of the firm and their impact on business performance, there is a lack of agreement on this.
In addition, conflict on the formulation of strategic orientation still exists among management scholars (Morgan & Strong, 2003).In the context of decision making, strategies are formulated to adapt to, respond to and share the environment. A strategic orientation will enable the firm’s proper adaptation to its environment.
The Strategic Orientation term as used by practitioners reflects the strategic directions implemented by a firm to guide its activities towards continual superior performance (Gao et al., 2007).Strategic Orientation focuses on the way a firm adapts to and interacts with its external environments (Zhou and Li 2010).
Strategic Orientation has also been described as strategic fit, Strategic readiness, strategic thrust, and strategic choice (Morgan and Strong 2003).
The term of strategy is defined as “the basic long term goals and objectives of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of actions and the allocation of resources necessary for executing these goals” (Chandler, 1962).
As the strategy is viewed as a model of decisions (Mintzberg 1978), it becomes obvious in the behaviour of organizations (Mintzberg and Waters 1982).Measure the strategy as a construct which can reflect a ‘pattern in a stream of decision’ (Mintzberg 1978) so that it’s symmetric with the behaviour of the organization (Mintzberg and Waters 1982) needs multidimensional scales.In this essence, the Strategic Orientation concept will help to provide proper measurement to strategy construct.
Venkatraman (1989) set that there are three approaches to strategy measurement; the narrative, the systematic and the comparative approach. The comparative approach is applicable to this study and is seeking to identifying and measuring the key traits or dimensions of the strategy construct.
Here, we adopted these four dimensions:
2.4.1 Aggressiveness Orientation
This Dimension measures the business ability to utilize organizational resources in executing aggressive strategies and seek to increase market share as a means to achieving business unit profitability.
The aim of the firm is to possess a higher market share inverse competitor (Abiodun, 2009).
Firms can be faster than their competitors in either product innovation or market development, both of which relate to the striving of the most competitive positions in the market (Lumpkin & Dess, 2001).
In order to attain product innovation, firms need to invest in the innovation process more aggressively than others, thus, their business performance may come down in the short term.Aggressiveness means that the firm is ambitious with regard to growth and supremacy in its markets, devoting all possible resources and working in all possible ways in pursuit of these objectives (Hamel & Prahalad, 1989).
Further, wherever possible, the strategically aggressive firm collect and builds resources and assets that can be leveraged toward competitive advantage (Johnson & Sohi, 2001).This strategy takes the form of cost leadership (Hitt et al, 2007), explosion and expansion strategy described by Wissema et al (1980), product innovation (Miller, 1988), price and image differentiation (Mintzberg, 1988).
2.4.2 Defensiveness Orientation
This dimension Raises the defensive behavior of an organization through the extent to which the Organization employs cost reduction and efficiency seeking techniques (Venkatraman 1989).
Defensiveness reflects a firm’s behavior toward defense their core specializations through the adoption of relevant strategies (Venkatraman, 1989). It concentrates on the importance within its existent domain, rather than new product/market development (Miles and Cameron 1982) which makes firms to be able to collect selected capabilities and skills, and prepare complex strategies to out perform less domain focused firms (Morgan and Strong 2003). A firm that selects defensive activities focuses on its specialized area and is likely to achieve high levels of business performance from such specialization (Morgan and Strong, 2003).
This state is related to the defender trait described by Miles and Snow (1978), defensive actions (Miles and Cameron, 1982), niche marketers (Miller, 1988), cost reduction (Schuler and Jackson, 1987), and niche differentiation (Ward et al, 1996).
2.4.3 Futurity Orientation
The futurity dimension refers to the adoption of a forward-looking, focus on long-term (Chan et al., 1998), reflecting one of the basic concepts of strategic management support, that is, how well prepared for and placed in future environmental situations an organization can be (Morgan and Strong, 1998).Futurity can also be indication of temparory considerations reflected in key strategic decisions, in terms of the relative emphasis on effectiveness (longer term) considerations against efficiency (shorter term) (Venkatraman, 1989).
A firm that possesses this trait is incorporating its vision of the future as part of the strategic concern.
As far as the relationship between futurity and performance is worried, it has been found that commercial payoffs tend to be noticeable in firms pursuing a long-term strategy, in comparison with short-term and transitory firms, regardless of the measures used to assess business performance.
This dimension is aneed to support organizational preparation, which maintains a role in reducing corporate concern about competitive futures and providing a foothold to understanding the pattern, form, and extent of potential change in competitive market.
2.4.4 Proactiveness Orientation
This dimension reflects the proactive behavior about the involvement in emerging industries, continuous search for market opportunity, and experimentation with possible answers to changing environmental trends (Venkatraman 1989). Morgan and Strong (2003) state that the proactive orientation dimension is prime to innovative behavior which reflects a firm’s unemployment for exploiting emerging opportunities, experimenting with change, and manage first mover actions (Dess et.al 1997; Lynn et.al 1996).Consequently, this dimension enables firms to form the nature and the direction of competition to its advantage.It shows also the degree of the firm’s experimentation with marketing research responses (Venkatraman, 1989). It explains a firm’s motive for first-mover position in the market (Chang et al, 2002), and searching for new opportunities (Miles and Snow, 1978), and the tracking of new markets through the engaging with valuable innovations.
2.5 Hypothesis development
2.5.1 Competitve Intelligence Process And Strategic Orientation
In (Cartwright, et..al, 1995: 420-434), where they mentioned the types of Competitive Intelligence and the types of Strategic Orientations; their study showed that Competitive Intelligence gives (5.55) improvement in strategic decisions on the seven point Likert scale, which is (0.84) better also they showed that Strategic Orientation that is connected with Competitive Intelligence give higher results with (Ad Hoc), (Continuous-comprehensive), (Continuous-Focused).
In (Makadok & Barney, 2001: 1621–1638) they studied the relationship between Competitive Intelligence and the strategy by confirming that intelligence is a searching probe for market move and is a critical strategic factor in the age of commercial knowledge and information to frame the organization strategy and to take part with their intelligent competitors. They discussed the types of information to get to enlarge their gains. And in (Hughes, 2005: 3-18), they confirmed the relationship between the strategy and Competitive Intelligence by its philosophy, entries and stages by the following table.